Abstract

This paper is an exploratory corpus-based investigation into a group of near synonymous adjectives: skinny, slim, and thin. It employs the British National Corpus (BNC) as data and Sketch Engine as data analysis instrument. By using corpus linguistics techniques such as concordance and collocation analysis, it compares the synonymous words’ usage, meaning, and pattern to identify which synonymous words are more appropriate in a certain context. The results suggest that thin has neutral nuance expression and slim tends to carry positive connotation, while skinny is often used by speakers when they want to be more pejorative or deprecating. Moreover, unlike skinny which mainly modifies animate-related nouns, slim is more heterogeneous as they also can modify inanimate-related nouns and when it collocates with inanimate nouns, it often extends its’ meaning into metaphor expression which means ‘small’. Thin is used in many idiomatic expressions and when combined with common words it can also be used to denote metaphorical meaning. These findings can be applied in English language teaching so that students will be able to use the synonymous adjectives in an apt context and to avoid undesirable implication.

Walker, C. (2011). How a corpus-based study of the factors which influence collocation can help in the teaching of business English. English for Specific Purposes, 30(2), 101-112. doi:10.5054/tq.2011.247710